


Close Confinement

by meridian_rose (meridianrose)



Category: Da Vinci's Demons
Genre: Abusive Parents, Community: writerverse, Confinement, Cousins, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Huddling For Warmth, Locked In, Mostly Gen, Self-Esteem Issues, Sharing a Bed, changing opinion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 14:56:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5053138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meridianrose/pseuds/meridian_rose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Locked in a cold, tiny room with a single bed, Lucrezia and Riario find themselves reluctantly forced into physical proximity. Discussions and dreams lead to revelations and a new closeness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close Confinement

Her uncle had never, until now, punished either of them in this way. Lucrezia, pressed against the cold stone wall, alternated her gaze between the darkness visible from the tiny barred window and the heavy locked door opposite. She had no idea how long he intended to keep them there; presumably until he thought they'd paid for their most recent failures, or until he needed them.

Riario's absence would be noted long before her own. Lucrezia hated being locked in this small dark room with her cousin, but the thought of him being released while she remained imprisoned turned her stomach.

There was the sound of footsteps and both of them stared at the door. Their hopes were quashed when the sound receded.

"How long has it been?" Lucrezia asked, breaking the heavy silence.

Riario lifted one shoulder in a shrug. He was perched on the edge of the narrow bed that took up most of the room. The dungeon where Lucrezia's father was being held was much larger than this and she didn’t know why it was this neglected bedchamber that had been chosen to contain them.

"An hour. Not yet two, I believe." Riario licked at the corner of his mouth, inadvisably poking at the dried blood. When His Holiness was angry he tended to lash out. While Lucrezia had never been physically struck by him – threatened, shoved, and occasionally dragged about one sleeve, but not hit – Riario often fell victim to a beating. 

Lucrezia rested her head against the wall in despair, but she soon grew cold and stepped away. She sat on the opposite side of the bed, facing the window rather than Riario.

She wasn't sure how long it was before she heard Riario give a wry chuckle. "What's so funny?"

"Leonardo," he said. "Our supposed failures regarding him are the reason we're locked away until the Holy Father's temper cools. But if he were here, he would find a way to escape. The artista is nothing if not resourceful."

Lucrezia shifted position. She hadn't fully appreciated how Leonardo had truly earned Riario's respect. "But he is not here. And even he would find it difficult to escape from a tiny window high above a courtyard, or break through a door firmly bolted on the outside."

"He's obsessed with flight," Riario noted. "Perhaps necessity would finally provide him with a way to leave through the window."

Lucrezia sighed, pulling her thin cloak more tightly around her shoulders. The night air was growing cooler and she tried to suppress a shiver. At last she stood and paced the floor, what little of it there was, hoping to get her blood flowing and so warm herself. Riario watched her without comment. 

When she grew weary she sank back down onto the bed. No food, no water, one chipped chamber pot under the bed. Two threadbare blankets and one pillow that barely deserved the name on the bed. Nothing else, not even a candle. All of their weapons had been taken, including her jewelled hairpin. Even Leonardo would be hard pressed to come up with a miracle escape, despite Riario's surprising faith in him.

"I'm going to sleep," she said finally, kicking off her shoes and climbing between the blankets. She'd likely freeze to death if she didn't find a way to warm up.

Riario, lost in thought until now, blinked. "Very well," he said. "And where am I to sleep?"

Lucrezia swallowed. "We will take turns," she said. "Wake me later and you may take the bed."

Riario scoffed. "There is another solution." He tugged at his boots, discarding them near the door. "One that will warm you far better than these bedclothes alone." He glared at them, adding, "My horse has better blankets."

He opened his jacket, baring his white shirt beneath. Lucrezia stilled, frozen from more than the cold as he climbed beneath the blanket alongside her.

There was little space and he was already pressed against her. She surrendered. She closed her eyes as he wrapped his arms around her, letting him lift and move her limp body until she was clasped against him. His thin shirt was the only barrier between his chest and her cleavage.

With her head tucked below his shoulder, Lucrezia could hear Riario's heartbeat. Despite her distaste, the warmth of his body, their shared warmth becoming greater than either of them alone could sustain, was welcome.

She tried to think of Leonardo, of Lorenzo, but while Riario was in some ways much the same to touch, he was too different in others to sustain the illusion. Besides, whatever her feelings for them, her relationship with both men was built on a lie. She was a spy, a honeyed trap, and her ambitions only began at finding her way into their beds. This was a necessity of a different sort, and there were no lies or secrets here. She and Riario knew exactly who the other was, what they were capable of, what terrible things they'd done to serve the false pope. There was, to her surprise, some comfort in that.

Lucrezia did not intend to sleep but she found herself waking and trying to remember where she was. Moonlight bathed one strip of the bed through the barred window, showing that some time had passed. Riario was struggling in her grasp, still asleep, muttering intelligibly, caught in the grasp of what she could only assume was a nightmare.

"Girolamo," she hissed, somehow not wanting to speak too loudly. She grasped at his forearm with one hand beneath the blankets, squeezing until her nails began to dig into his skin. "Riario!"

He woke with a start, and it took him longer than it had her to take in the situation. The tension fled once he realised there was no danger and he relaxed back onto the pillow. Lucrezia moved, extricating herself from his grasp, and smoothed ineffectually at her creased dress before lying back alongside him.

"Are you all right?" she asked at last, when his breathing had returned to normal. He moved his head briefly in assent. She could not be certain, in the dim light, if it was shame or lingering fear on his face. With his hair in disarray and his huge eyes wide in the twilight, he did not frighten her. He was utterly vulnerable and it unexpectedly tugged at her heart.

She reached up and, for once, it was he who shied away from her. Even as he lifted a hand to retaliate, she made a soothing sound and did nothing more dreadful than tuck a lock of hair back behind his ear. He stared at her, his confusion obvious.

"It was just a dream," she said softly. "Everyone has nightmares."

"It was not just any dream," he countered, and she had rarely heard such raw emotion in his voice. "It is a recollection of a memory. One of a terrible deed which I am forced to relive from time to time."

Lucrezia put her hand back beneath the covers to warm it, and found Riario's hand, clasped it in her own. "Tell me," she said, not an order, not quite a question.  
  
Riario gave a hollow laugh. "You despise me already. I would not add fuel to the fire, nor would I give you ammunition to use against me by revealing something so personal."

She understood, though she was disappointed. Lorenzo had been quick to share his secrets, starting with every dissatisfaction he had within his marriage and soon encompassing every aspect of his work and duties. Leonardo saw little need for secrecy, wanting knowledge to be freely given away, refusing to hide anything of himself. Riario was different, unwilling to be persuaded by her gentle touch. 

In truth, Riario was more like Lucrezia herself, living a more contained and constrained life, rarely showing his true nature. While her relationships were falsehoods, his were nonexistent, for they were both trapped by Sixtus and his plans.

"Do you think, if we had met under other circumstances, things would be different?" Riario asked.

Lucrezia assumed his nightmare had prompted such pondering. "We will never know."

"Do you lack the imagination to at least consider it?"

She frowned. "If your father had not murdered Amelia, you mean?" She could not keep the bitterness from her tone.

"Yes." Riario squeezed at her hand. "I tried, Lucrezia. We both begged for her life. I tried to persuade him to spare you both. But he is so powerful. I could not defy him."

Lucrezia stared into his eyes, seeing unaccustomed sincerity. When she did not speak, Riario went on, "My life is in his hands as much as yours is. Why else would I be confined as you are in this cell? He uses us, and can discard us on a whim. I serve God, and I believe the Holy Father does too, but I have no illusions as to my own worth."

"You are a count, and captain general of the Holy Roman Church," she said.

He made a noise of disagreement. "Titles given by the Holy Father, which can be just as easily taken away."

Lucrezia had spent the past ten years hearing from Sixtus how she was nothing but a vessel for his plans, being told how women were lesser in the eyes of God and man, hearing society's rumours and slurs about her sexual activities. But she had purpose, and the memory of her father's pride and faith in her, to sustain her. She saw men weaken at her feminine touch and spill their secrets as surely as a man could make them spill their blood. She knew her value.

It had not occurred to her until now that Riario was lacking in his own estimation. That while he believed fervently that he would be rewarded in Heaven for his actions, on earth he had no-one to praise him, to cherish him.

"I do blame you for not protecting Amelia," she said, tears welling up as she spoke. "But you're right. We are both his victims. The difference is, you first chose willingly to serve him, and I did not."

Riario lowered his gaze. "I had few choices and made the decisions I thought best at the time. As do we all."

Lucrezia pulled his hand to lie on her hip, releasing him so she could drape her arm over his body. "Yes," she said. "Yes, if we had met under other circumstances, things could have been different for us."

He looked surprised and, for a moment, there was joy and hope in his eyes. Then he clamped back down on his emotions, forcing his usual reserve to the surface. "Though as you say, we will never know."

Still, they stayed huddled together until the first hint of dawn, when a guard finally came to release them.


End file.
